Anyone planning to work in China is required to take undergo health check-up that ranges from eye-tests to HIV and involves a taxi ride into the’ burbs before being handed off on a corridors worth of doctors and nurses. The process is very efficient (and communicable diseases aside is very difficult to fail). It’s also designed to cope with almost no aural interaction between staff and patients – necessary given the range of languages spoken by their visitors. One of the final steps of the process is making a payment: for which the cash register shows the name of the payee.

In what contexts is it acceptable to acknowledge the name of the customer and which not? And why?